"In addition, despite the fact that most people were reminded of P-code
when Java came out, Sun attempted to put the JVM on silicon and
achieved EXACTLY the same results Western Digital did when they tried
to put the P-machine on silicon, namely a processor that could not run
bytecode as fast as a general purpose machine. Turns out all that
register manipulation and multiple modes makes a difference after all.

The tired saying that applies is: The first thing you learn from
history is that nobody learns from history."

Less famous examples have also occurred. For example, SAAB created a
processor intended to be optimized for Ada but a document (written by
a rival) claimed better performance. It is located at
pub/ws/wsd/erc32/doc/ada_bench4.pdf on FTP.ESTEC.ESA.NL (by FTP
obviously).

This kind of attempt at optimizing had been discouraged in "Computer
Architecture: A Quantitative Approach", 2nd edition, by John L
Hennessey and David A Patterson, Morgan Kaufmanm Publishers Inc, 1990,
1-55880-069-8.